Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 28/3/2019)

Documentarists have also been drawn to the artist, with Alain Resnais's Van Gogh (1948) being followed by Mai Zetterling and David Hughes's Vincent the Dutchman (1972) and Paul Cox's Vincent: The Life and Death of Vincent Van Gogh (1987), in which the lead was taken by Michael Gough and John Hurt. Indeed, Exhibition on Screen is so taken with the Post-Impressionist that it will follow Vincent Van Gogh: A New Way of Seeing (2015) with Van Gogh & Japan on 4 June.

For now, however, the focus falls on Julian Schnabel's At Eternity's Gate, which saw Willem Dafoe add Golden Globe and Oscar nominations to his victory in the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival, Scripted by the director, Jean-Claude Carrière and Louise Kugelberg, this is a visually sumptuous picture that reflects Schnabel's painterly preoccupations. Yet, while it's markedly different in tone from his earlier artistic biopic, Basquiat (1996), the familiarity of the subject matter means that this isn't always as dramatically bold as Before Night Falls (2000) and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), which earned Schnabel an Oscar nomination and the Best Director prize at Cannes. 

In Paris in 1888, Vincent Van Gogh (Willem Dafoe) is distraught when an innkeeper withdraws an offer to hang paintings on his wall. But, while dining with his art dealer brother, Theo (Rupert Friend), Van Gogh meets Paul Gauguin (Oscar Isaac), who is bored with the petty hierarchies within the Parisian art world and advises the Dutchman to go south in search of fresh inspiration. On arriving in Arles, Van Gogh paints his boots in a frenzy of creativity, while the wind rattles his windows. When he does venture outside, however, he is overcome by the light and the landscape, with even the dead sunflowers giving him an unusual sense of freedom and well-being. 

While supping at the inn, Van Gogh asks Madame Ginoux (Emmanuelle Seigner) if she knows of a place he could use as a studio. She finds him a yellow room nearby and Theo arranges the rent. However, Van Gogh is always short of funds and is spurned when he offers 50 francs for Ginoux to spend the night with him, as she knows he is broke and is put off by his poor hygiene. Barmaid Gaby (Stella Schnabel), is equally unimpressed when he tells her that he paints flowers to immortalise their beauty, although she offers to pose for him and scolds him when he suggests he could make her look younger. 

Ginoux gives Van Gogh a large accounts ledger and, when the weather improves, he fills it with sketches made with a pen that he fashions from a towering reed during one of his many walks through the surrounding countryside. Clambering through the hills in his ubiquitous straw hat, he is inspired by everything he sees and strives to see the eternity behind the landscape and capture the meaning of Nature. But he lashes out when a party of schoolchildren mock a painting of some tree roots and their teacher (Anne Consigny) calls Van Gogh a madman as she chivvies them away. Indeed, he is confined in an asylum after beating a boy who threw stones at him and he is relieved when Theo comes to visit him. He claims to have no idea why he has been committed, but admits to having visions and dark thoughts that he fears could drive him to murder or suicide. 

As he is too busy to stay, Theo arranges for Gauguin to come to Arles and pays his expenses in return for a steady supply of pictures. The friends work en plein air and agree that they need to start a revolution in art because the Impressionists have nothing new to say. They discuss the uniqueness of an artist's perspective and how environment can feed and shape inspiration. But they also disagree on matters of life and technique, with Gauguin chiding Van Gogh for the haste with which he paints Ginoux's portrait after he had painstakingly created a sketch. He claims he over-paints and daubs oils on the canvas so heavily that he comes closer to sculpture than painting. However, Van Gogh thrives in his company and is crestfallen when Gauguin announces that he has to return to Paris because he has sold some work and needs to be around intelligent people and not the stupid, wicked provincials he finds in Arles. 

In a desperate bid to dissuade Gauguin from leaving, Van Gogh cuts off his left ear. However, he is too late and gives the bloody ear to Gaby in a piece of paper with the words `Remember Me' written on it. Interviewed by Dr Felix Ray (Vladimir Consigny), Van Gogh tries to justify his action and reveals that he often hears the taunts of a malevolent spirit and may well have severed his ear to silence it. Agreeing that he drinks too much and needs to regain control of himself, Van Gogh is admitted to an institution at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. 

While he is locked away by the director (Vincent Perez) and subjected to water treatments with a facially tattooed ex-soldier (Niels Arestrup), his paintings are exhibited in Theo's shop and his wife, Johanna (Amira Casar), reads an article by Albert Aurier (Louis Garrel) commending the boldness of Van Gogh's style. However, the need to be outdoors prompts him to run away and he is recaptured after molesting a shepherdess (Lolita Chammah) he asks to pose for a picture. He is interviewed by a priest (Mads Mikkelsen) about his state of mind and his conviction that he has a God-given gift for painting. The cleric is sceptical about Van Gogh's talent and wonders why he produces works of such ugliness. But he defends his desire to paint things the way he sees them and refuses to believe (having studied theology as the son of a pastor) that the Almighty would saddle him with a corrupted vision. 

As the people of Arles have signed a petition to disbar him and he cannot bear the thought of living in the capital, Van Gogh settles in Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris. Eager to help after being unable to sell any of his brother's paintings, Theo puts him in touch with admirer Dr Paul Gachet (Mathieu Amalric), who poses for a portrait and discusses Van Gogh's métier. He suggests he may well be ahead of his time and must leave a legacy for future generations to see what he was trying to achieve. Moreover, he confides that painting detaches him from the thoughts that torment him. Yet, he is sane enough to recognise that his talent depends upon his flaws and he admits that being cured would not be a blessing.

While out working on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh is approached by two boys brandishing weapons. They are playing at cowboys and meaning no harm when a gun goes off. Burying the canvas and tossing the firearms into the river, the youths plead with the wounded Van Gogh not to betray them and he staggers back to Gachet's house to insist that he has no idea why he has a bullet hole in his stomach. He dies before Theo can see him and is laid out in a simple coffin in his shop, surrounded by canvases that are inspected by curious customers. 

Closing captions reveal that Van Gogh withheld the truth about his demise after completing 75 pictures in the 80 days he resided in Auvers-sur-Oise. Moreover, Madame Ginoux never knew that he had returned the ledger containing 65 drawings by way of payment for her kindness and it was something of a miracle that it survived to be rediscovered 126 years later in 2016. A last flourish sees the screen yellow out, as Gauguin recalls his friend's love of that colour and how he had once daubed on the wall of his room in Arles, `I am the Holy Spirit. I am sound of spirit.'

Making extensive use of a handheld camera, abrupt facial close-ups and an array of perspectival distortions, Schnabel and cinematographer Benoît Delhomme strive to convey the world through Van Gogh's eyes. At one point, they even switch to negative-like monochrome (a conceit that feels as unnecessary as the shifts between English and French dialogue). Indeed, Schnabel frequently over-reaches and often lapses into pathos, as in having the artist crumble Provençal soil on his face or kneel with arms outstretched to feel the breeze in his ginger beard. But he and his co-writers are more successful at capturing the Dutchman's source of inspiration than they are at getting inside his troubled mind.

While Schnabel could rely on the visuals to fathom Van Gogh's creativity, he resorts to verbosity to discern the nature of his inner turmoil. He's fortunate that Dafoe is able to make the often florid discussions of demons, deities and delusions appear to come from the heart. However, the leading questions posed by Vladimir Consigny, Vincent Perez and Mads Mikkelsen feel as forced as the comparison of Van Gogh and Jesus Christ as great men who were ignored during their lifetimes and feted in death. Much more credible are the conversations with Rupert Friend and Oscar Isaac, although Schnabel rather sits on the fence in gauging Gauguin's influence on Van Gogh's style and sanity. Indeed, it's a fellow `madman' who cuts through the nonsense to bluntly ask Van Gogh what he paints and his answer - `sunlight' - seems all the more poignant considering it's delivered in a darkened room in an asylum.

Given the difficulty of conveying artistic ecstasy on screen, Schnabel is right to employ such experiential immediacy, especially as Dafoe often assumes an outward serenity that belies his psychological distress. The borderline discordance of Tatiana Lisovskaya's piano and violin score ably reinforces these enigmatic contrasts, while Stéphane Cressend's production design avoids straining to recreate views and rooms as they are depicted on the celebrated canvases. Yet, while Schnabel matches Paul Cox in suggesting that painting for Van Gogh was tantamount to a messianic vocation (and one for which he was prepared to sacrifice himself so that others may believe), much of this occasionally self-consciously fragmentary account (which is named after an 1890 picture from Saint-Rémy that's also known as `Sorrowing Old Man') is overly familiar. When is someone going to follow Tate Britain's lead and make a film about the painter's time in Ramsgate and Isleworth?

The ballet biopic has taken some interesting steps in recent times and Wim Wenders's Pina (2011) and Jacqui and David Morris's Nureyev (2018) is now followed by Icíar Bollaín's Yuli: The Carlos Acosta Story. Adapted from the Cuban dancer's autobiography, No Way Home, this is the third narrative collaboration - after Even the Rain (2010) and The Olive Tree (2016) - between the Spanish director and her British screenwriting partner, Paul Laverty, who is best known for his association with Ken Loach. 

Arriving at the Cuban National Ballet after driving through the vibrant streets of Havana , Carlos Acosta (playing himself) sits in on rehearsals while flicking through the pages of a scrapbook. He recalls breakdancing as a 10 year-old boy (Edlison Manuel Olbera Núñez) and begrudgingly accompanying parents Pedro (Santiago Alfonso) and Maria (Yerlín Pérez) to an audition at the prestigious ballet school. Convinced dancing was not for real men, Yuli had refused to co-operate. But Chery (Laura De La Uz) recognises his talent and offers him a place, which he accepts at the insistence of his mother and father, who are too poor to live apart, even though they have been divorced for some time. 

Such is the Hispanic Maria's growing sense of desperation that she agrees to leave Yuli and Marilin (Anyeley Kwei) behind so that she can flee to Florida with her mother, sister and eldest daughter. Berta (Andrea Doimeadiós). Pedro is dismayed and takes Yuli to the plantation, where his ancestors had been slaves. He describes the indignities and punishments they had suffered, but reminds him that he belongs to the Ogun warriors and should always be proud of his Yoruba heritage. 

Back in the present, Acosta dances an interpretation of this brush with his past (playing his father, while Mario Elias assumes the Yuli role) and surprises the other members of the company by revealing that he only ever made this journey in his mind. As we return to the 1980s, Maria decides to stay in Havana. But Yuli detests his classes and runs away from the school. He finds himself in Vittorio Garatti's National Arts Schools and overhears a guide telling a party about how it was built on the site of a former country club after Fidel Castro and Che Guevara had hatched the idea while playing its final round of golf. However, when Soviets had considered it a luxury and the project had been abandoned before it was completed. 

When Pedro is jailed after a motorcyclist is killed by running into the back of his truck, Yuli goes off the rails and Chery has to come to his neighbourhood to drag him off to a concert. She cleans him up as best she can in the back of a car, while other staff members berate Yuli for throwing away a golden opportunity. He performs with aplomb and takes Pedro a photograph to show him how well he is doing. Indeed, he lies that he is a changed character and that the school is thrilled with his progress. In order to replicate his father's fury on finding out the truth, Acosta and Elias dance a belt thrashing session that leads back into Yuli's mother and sisters trying to console him in his pain. 

As Chery is unable to prevent Yuli from being expelled, she arranges for him to attend the ESBEC boarding school in Pinar del Río. Despite his pleas not to be sent away, Yuli heeds Pedro's claim that he would accept daily beatings if it meant helping his son to realise his talent. The action cross-cuts between Yuli loathing every second of his ordeal and Elias dancing his conflicted emotions. At one point, Acosta gives Elias notes that reveal the extent of his loneliness on Wednesdays, which was visiting day and Pedro and Maria never came to see him, as his father was always too busy and his mother was always too sick. 

A silhouetted dance shows Yuli being bullied after he was caught stealing and we see him humiliated in front of the entire school. At this lowest ebb, however, he attended a ballet performance on the outdoor stage and he was so mesmerised by the power and grace of the male dancer (and moved by the applause he receives) that he starts practicing alone at night and a spectacular sequence presents him pirouetting in a downpour, with the rain sprays off his head as he spins. 

From this epiphanal moment, we cut to 1990, as Carlos (Keyvin Martínez) wins the prestigious Prix de Lausanne and, despite poor TV reception, Pedro, Maria and Marilin (Betiza Bismark) watch with a pride that isn't felt by Berta. Under Chery's tutelage, he goes to Turin, where he wins a scholarship and dances on an empty stage with Isabelle. Back home, Pedro keeps a scrapbook, as the Cuban press waxes lyrical about the `Golden Mulato'. He also tells him to forget home and seize the opportunity to break new ground for a black dancer by dancing with the English National Ballet. Worried that Chery will get into trouble for letting him go without government permission, Carlos is nervous about accepting. But she refuses to let him miss a chance to develop as an artist and as a man. 

Despite the step up, London proves to be a lonely place and Carlos is racked by the news that Berta has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Moreover, he damages his ankle, and, while recovering in hospital, he sees reports about compatriots risking their lives to reach Miami by makeshift raft because the Cuban economy has collapsed. Needing to reconnect, Carlos flies home. But, while Maria and Marilin are delighted to see him, Pedro is furious with him for complaining about a bit of rain and allowing nostalgic wallowing to cause him to lose concentration and jeopardise his career. When Carlos claims he wouldn't care if he ever danced again and accuses his father of stealing his childhood, Pedro berates him for wasting a gift he doesn't deserve. 

We leap from this confrontation in a Havana backstreet to Acosta watching his company performing a political piece about American interference in Latin America (with English narration, but no identifying caption to clue non-Acostaficionados what on earth we're supposed to be watching). When one of the troupe asks Acosta to explain the piece, he simply gets up and walks away with a curt remark about knowing the truths about his life and others needing to find them out for themselves. This point leads us back to Carlos hanging out with his pal Opito (Cesar Domínguez), who relishes confrontation with cops demanding bribes and bouncers seeking to keep him out of the swanky hotels favoured by tourists. One of the gang informs Carlos that Opito is building a raft to sail to Florida and he gets cross with his friend for trying to talk him out of such a perilous voyage. 

No mention is made of the fact that Carlos is on his way to becoming principal dancer at the National Ballet of Cuba. Instead, we see Chery scolding him for getting fat while living the high life with his posse. He insists he is worried about his ankle (which isn't true, as he is already dancing) and she avers that he is insulting her by throwing her sacrifices back in her face. She urges him to accept an invitation to join the Houston Ballet and he goes to see the National Ballet director with Pedro (their quarrel forgotten, just like that). As they wait in the foyer, a small black boy leaves a lesson to ask if he is the famous Carlos and father and son burst out laughing when the onetime truant tells the kid to focus on his studies. 

Elias leads a routine in which Yuli becomes a ladies' man. But he keeps his eye on the prize and we see Pedro smiling with quiet satisfaction as he pastes in a clipping about his son joining the Royal Ballet. More pages are filled with the covers of programmes from Carlos's triumphs, as we cut between him walking the cold London streets on his own and an ensemble piece with Elias that seems to suggest he is anything but alone. Strobe lights suddenly flash and we cut back to Havana, where Berta (who has been all but forgotten for the last 30 minutes of the film) is about to throw herself off the sea wall. Too busy to join his family for the funeral, Carlos tosses a rose off a bridge into the Thames and silently curses the cruelty of the world.

Normal service is soon resumed, however, and Pedro resumes his scrapbook-keeping duties, as Carlos becomes the Royal Ballet's first black Romeo. He comes to London to see his son perform and gives a speech at supper afterwards, in which he thanks Maria and Chery for their part in keeping Carlos heading in the right direction. Moreover, he urges him to make England his home base from which to conquer the world and their toast cuts back to Acosta bringing Romeo and Juliet to Havana and Chery coming to the theatre to tell him how proud she is. Acosta goes to Pedro's grave before dancing on the stage at the Cuban Ballet in a burst of patriotic pride.

Essentially, this scattershot biopic is a tale of three debutants. Renowned dancer and choreographer Santiago Alfonso excels as Pedro Acosta, as he drives his son to recognise and respect his talent, while Edilson Manuel Olbera Núñez is feistily superb as the rebellious Yuli, who seethes with a homophobic distaste for ballet when he could be moonwalking like Michael Jackson. However, the film loses much as a drama when Núñez is replaced by Keyvin Martinez, a dancer in Acosta's company, whose limited acting range is cruelly exposed by the skittishly episodic depiction of Carlos's first difficult years away from home. 

But Martinez is not helped by the sloppiness of Laverty's script, which cuts too many corners in striving to contrast Carlos's homesickness with his family's suffering. One of his reasons for returning to Havana is to see Berta, but he fails to even visit her after Maria mentions that she's improving in hospital. The audience has invested a certain amount of emotion in her situation. Yet, Bollaín and Laverty ignore her and instead insist that we care about Opito and his reckless rafting expedition, when he hasn't figured in the film before. Moreover, it's impossible to discern whether he is a factual character or a composite cipher. Either way, his dilemma comes across as lazy conscience prodding of the kind that Laverty has introduced to Ken Loach's cinema. 

Moreover, we see Martínez dancing with a succession of anonymous partners in rehearsal halls and empty theatres without learning which performances fuelled Acosta's reputation and why. Showbiz biopics have used so-called Hollywood montages of newspaper headlines, calendar pages and showbills to summarise periods of progression or regression. But not everyone will know enough about Acosta's career to appreciate the significance of the items shown and many will want to know a lot more about how he was treated as an imported star than the film is prepared to reveal. How did he and Chery manage to persuade the authorities to let him travel so freely and was his isolation in London down to envy, prejudice or his own demons? What's certain is that Cuba's problems in this period owed as much to the collapse of the Soviet Union as the interventionism of Smedley D. Butler and the insertion of the denunciatory dance routine merely clutters an already digressive and disjointed segment of the story. 

The decision to include metatextual passages of Acosta rehearsing a show based on his life enables Bollaín to circumvent biopic convention and allows viewers to see the man in action. But the cutaways feel self-conscious and aren't always photographed with the dynamism that Alex Catalán brings to the sun-kissed shots of Havana that reinforce the pervading tone of romanticisation as much as Alberto Iglesias's often swooningly lush score. Clearly Acosta himself is happy with Bollaín's approach and there are moments of dramatic and balletic potency. However, this is a flamboyant, faltering and frustrating feature that is nowhere near as daring in its execution as it presumes.

Anyone familiar with Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell's documentary, Until the Light Takes Us (2008), will wonder why anyone felt there was a need to make a narrative interpretation of the role that the band Mayhem played in the Norwegian Black Metal scene in the late 1980s. At one point, Japanese auteur Sion Sono was linked with adapting a non-fiction tome by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Soderlind. However, the project passed to Swede Jonas Åkerlund, the former Bathory drummer who has produced fictional features like Spun (2002), Horsemen (2009) and Small Apartments (2012), but is best known for his music videos and such Grammy-winning performance features as Madonna's The Confessions Tour (2008) and Paul McCartney's Live Kisses (2014). Yet, while Åkerlund might seem the ideal director for Lords of Chaos, his uncertainty of tone will leave many feeling perplexed or betrayed. 

Following a caption claiming that what we are about to see is `based on truth, lies and what actually happened', narrator Øystein Aarseth (Rory Culkin) informs us that his life story is not going to end well. He is known as 'Euronymous' and is the guitarist in an Oslo-based band called Mayhem. However, when drummer Manheim and vocalist Maniac quit, Euronymous and bassist Jørn 'Necrobutcher' Stubberud (Jonathan Barnwell) are joined by Jan Axel 'Hellhammer' Blomberg (Anthony De La Torre) and Swede Pelle 'Dead' Ohlin (Jack Kilmer), who has a fixation with mortality after losing consciousness following a severe beating. When the band moves into a remote villa, Dead sleeps in a coffin and hangs a cat corpse from the rafters of his bedroom. He even dares Euronymous to shoot him in the head while out hunting a black kitty in the woods. 

For all his eccentricities, however, Dead has the voice that makes Mayhem a cult success and he astonishes Euronymous during one gig by flinging a pig's head into the audience and cutting himself so that his blood spurts into the audience. The gig is filmed by ligger Jon 'Metalion' Kristiansen (Sam Coleman) and watched by Kristian 'Varg' Vikernes (Emory Cohen), who approaches Euronymous in a café to tell him how much he admires the band and its ethos. Their myth is further boosted when Dead slashes his wrists and throat before blowing out his brains and Euronymous goes to a garage to buy a camera to take doctored snaps of the crime scene before calling the cops. He even had necklaces made from fragments of Dead's skull. But Necrobutcher calls him sick and gets fired. 

Borrowing money from his affluent father, Euronymous opens a record shop called Helvete (`Hell') and Stian 'Occultus' Johannsen (Lucian Charles Collier), Gylve 'Fenriz of Darkthrone' Nagell (Andrew Lavelle) and Bård Guldvik 'Faust' Eithun (Valter Skarsgård) become part of the Black Circle that Euronymous hopes will become the centre of his empire, which also includes a record label, Deathlike Silence Productions. Among his other new friends is Ann-Marit (Sky Ferreira), who flirts with him out of a sense of danger, and Varg, whose attempts to fit in incur the mockery of the increasingly power-crazed Euronymous. However, the music he makes with his one-man band, Burzum, impresses Euronymous, who overlooks the fact the newcomer is a teetotal vegetarian, who denounces metallists who pose in satanic t-shirts without having the courage of their nihilist convictions. 

But Varg (aka Count Grishnackh) is only just getting started. In order to promote his debut album, he takes up Euronymous's dare and torches the ancient wooden Fantoft Stave church in Bergen. Moreover, he becomes a fabled stud and Euronymous is so jealous of his success that he gives him a Dead necklace and invites him to join Mayhem, along with Hungarian vocalist Attila Csihar (Arion Csihar) and guitarist Blackthorn (Wilson Gonzalez Ochsenknecht). Euronymous joins Varg in using bibles and a bomb to burn down a church that was built on the site of a sacrificial altar to Odin. But regaining the initiative over the group proves harder than he had anticipated and he realises that Varg is gunning for him. 

Alienated by the church burnings, but made curious by slasher movies to know what it feels like to kill someone, Faust stabs a gay man to death after being followed home from a bar. He celebrates by joining Euronymous and Varg in starting another blaze. But, even though he sleeps with Ann-Marit, the pressure of being the leader of the Black Circle starts to get to Euronymous and he has monochrome nightmares about Dead. Moreover, he wishes he could brings things back under his control, as he becomes increasingly paranoid that the police are spying on him at the shop. 

It's now 1993 and Mayhem record their first album, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, and Varg and Euronymous fall out over a plan to burn down Oslo cathedral. Covinced he needs to take assertive action, Varg arranges an interview with Bergen journalist Finn Tender (Gustaf Hammarsten), who doesn't have to try too hard to trick him into posing for photographs with pagan and Nazi paraphernalia and incriminating himself as an arsonist. But, while he is arrested, the police have no evidence and Varg is released as Euronymous does a phone interview with Kerrang! magazine's Jason Arnopp (playing himself and not very convincingly) and Norwegian Black Metal becomes a cult phenomenon. 

On his release, Varg accuses Euronymous of being a fraud who has stolen his ideas and his money and now intends cashing in on the publicity his interview generated to promote Mayhem. He quits the band and is disgusted to discover that the Dead necklaces have been made from chicken bones. In a bid to get him off his back, Euronymous draws up a contract to return all the rights to Varg's music and sends it with an accompanying letter hoping that they can remain friends. However, while shooting his mouth off, Euronymous had once boasted that he wanted to kill Varg and make a snuff movie. In an incautious moment, Faust had confided this information to Attila, who tells Varg and he vows to get his revenge in first. 

Renting a copy of Renny Harlin's Die Hard 2 (1990) to provide him with an alibi, Varg has Attila drive him from Bergen to Oslo. He is furious when they have to stop to use his credit card to buy petrol, but has regained control by the time they arrive at Euronymous's apartment. Ann-Marit has just cut his hair short and he is typing a press release about Mayhem's future plans when Varg rings his bell. Surprised to see him, he lets him in and has no idea what his visitor is talking about when he mentions a murder plan. Consequently, he is completely off his guard when Varg plunges a knife in his stomach and leaves him to stagger off to find a spare set of keys to his locked door. Varg makes him self a chocolate milk drink before renewing his stabbing frenzy on the stairs, as he tells Euronymous he has brought this upon himself by being an embarrassment who talks big, but never follows through. 

Finishing him off by penetrating his skull, Varg runs away, leaving a blood smear on the banister. He gets into the car and says nothing, as Attila drives away. As the news breaks, however, the cops make arrests and we see Varg, Faust and Attila being taken into custody. In voiceover, Euronymous urges the director to stop all the sentimental sensationalism, as he is proud of creating true Norwegian Black Metal and demands to know what he (we) have ever done.

Although it's soaked with gore throughout, Jonas Åkerlund's descent into the depths of the Norwegian psyche is also sprinkled with deliciously dark wit. The child murdering message on Euronymous and Dead's answering machine is unsettlingly amusing, while the sight of Varg in corpse make-up nibbling on a crispbread is bound to raise a smile. As is the fact that the parents of these lost boys are so oblivious to what they're getting up to that they supply them with potted plants, spaghetti dinners and the funds to record their albums, as if they were the quartet in The Big Bang Theory. Of course, Euronymous and Varg are very much nerds, whose lank headbanger hair and scruffy black attire only reinforces the social gaucheness that makes it so astonishing that Varg is such a hit (albeit a misogynist one) with the ladies. Indeed, it's their insecurity that makes them take everything the wrong way and prevents them from having conversations that could resolve a multitude of problems. 

As Aites and Ewell's actuality demonstrated, Varg and Euronymous were pretty much like this in real life, as the former was driven by a sense of outsider rage and the latter by his pride and grief at Dead's untimely demise. But both Rory Culkin and Emory Cohen play their roles with a winking gravity that is echoed by the score contrasting so markedly with the pounding metal numbers has been composed by Icelandic avant-rock outfit Sigur Rós. Pär M. Ekberg's cinematography and Emma Fairley's production design are also on the nose, while the hair styling and effects make-up contributions are also worth noting. 

Åkerlund also directs with considerable flair, although he is more successful in showing how difficult it is to stab someone to death than he is in suggesting how easy it is to burn down a wooden church. The script co-written with Dennis Magnusson also has its glitches, as too little socio-religious context is provided to prompt Mayhem's rebellion, while the failure of authorities to latch on to the nihilistic aspects of Black Metal seems a touch specious. Nevertheless, for all its Spinal Tappishness, the film has caused as much of an outcry in Norway as the recent Anders Brevik studies, Erik Poppe's Utøya: July 22 and Paul Greengrass's 22 July (both 2018).

Since he received a 20-year ban from making films on 20 December 2010, Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi has become the master of metafictional subterfuge, as he has not only managed to produce four features, but he has also found ways to smuggle them out of the country so that they can be seen by international audiences. Following the positive responses to This Is Not a Film (2011) and Closed Curtain (2013), the jury at the Berlin Film Festival awarded the Golden Bear to Taxi (2015) and its Cannes counterpart has followed suit by presenting the prize for Best Screenplay to Panahi and co-scenarist Nader Saeivar for 3 Faces. While it refers to Panahi's ongoing plight, however, this ambitious road movie is more concerned with the silencing of opinion and the oppression of women and it's noticeable that Panahi has not only chosen his ancestral heartland in Iranian Azerbaijan for the setting of this audacious statement, but that he has also invoked the spirit of such docurealist pioneers as Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf in alighting upon its deceptively playful tone. 

In a video recorded on her phone, Marziyeh (Marziyeh Rezaei) explains that she is about to hang herself because she has failed in her bid to become an actress after her parents and fiancé reneged on a promise to let her study at the Tehran drama academy if she consented to marry. She entreats a friend to forward the message to celebrated Iranian actress Behnaz Jafari, who is her role model. But Marziyeh can't resist complaining that she has sent dozens of messages to her idol and received no reply and feels rather let down. Taking a noose that is suspended from a branch in what looks like a cave, Marziyeh slips the rope over her head and the camera hits the ground. 

Shocked by the communication, the red-haired Behnaz travels by car with director Jafar Panahi and asks if he thinks the footage is genuine. She can't believe that Marziyeh would actually kill herself, but is eager to visit her village and discover the truth for herself. Panahi admits he can't see any trick cut in the dramatic closing image and thinks it may well be real. But Behnaz remains sceptical because she hasn't found any messages on her current phone or on the old numbers that she has passed on to her friends. 

Pulling over when his phone rings, Panahi takes a call from the female director who is making a film with Behnaz. She is cross with her for not asking permission to absent herself from a location shoot when she can't finish the picture without her. He stalls her by suggesting his colleague thinks of a way to solve her problem rather than asking him and cuts her off to speak to his mother, who is frustrated that he has gone off without telling her. He reassures her that he is merely on a trip with a friend and isn't risking the ire of the authorities by making another illicit film. 

While Panahi chats, the camera follows Behnaz, as she wanders around the car in the darkness and opens the boot to wash her face. Following a cut to the next morning, Panahi fills the radiator from a spring at the side of the road. Behnaz has been sleeping and wants to go to the cemetery at Sinan village to check for a fresh grave. She calls Marziyeh a bitch because she is convinced she has conned her and even suspects Panahi of being in cahoots with her because the footage is on his phone and he had once mentioned a script about a suicide. 

As they drive along a winding country road in the Turkish-speaking Azerbaijan region in north-western Iran, an elderly man (Hassan Mihammadi) tells Panahi to speak in his language and not Persian. He makes him beep his horn and gets a reply before sending him along the road. They pass a wedding party and this convinces Beznah that the girl hasn't killed herself, as they wouldn't celebrate in a time of mourning. Stopping again, they ask the elderly Yadollah (Dadashnejad Yadollah) about the cemetery and he invites them to tea. He recognises Beznah, but can't place her face. He tells Panahi that his Turkish isn't very good and chats in Persian about Noah and Solomon and the state of the world. Yadollah gives them directions and inquires whether they are treasure hunters because they don't look like the types who would normally hang around graveyards. Behnaz assures him that they are merely photographing the landscape and, seeming satisfied, their host waves them off. 

On arriving at the cemetery, they find an old woman (Fatemeh Ismaelitejad) lying in a burial plot with a lantern to keep the away the snakes that she believes have been sent to punish her for being bad. Panahi assures her she won't have done anything wrong and wishes her a long life. Behnaz is confused and asks again if he is sure that the film clip isn't a put-up job. As he had already given his opinion, Panahi takes umbrage with her for questioning his judgement. Giving her the car keys, he stalks off and Behnaz feels aggrieved by his annoyance and drives off (after getting herself into a tizzy over the seatbelt).

Arriving at a village with lots of kids milling about, Behnaz gets out and signs some autographs. The men look on admiringly and the women embrace her. When Panahi wanders up the road, one resident asks if he has come to help with their power and water supplies. When he says they are looking for Marziyeh, they are dismayed because no one likes her. A youngish man tells them to follow her sister to the family home, where a furious younger brother (Mehdi Panahi) tries to drive them away because Marziyeh has dishonoured the family. His mother (Narges Delaram) locks him in an outhouse and begins making tea. She tells them that Marziyeh has been missing for three days and regrets taking her to a secret audition at the conservatory because she had no idea that her daughter had the talent to secure a place. Now she has driven her fiancé to distraction and everyone else is brassed off with her antics. 

Concerned that something really has happened, the visitors go in search of Marziyeh's cousin, Maedeh (Maedeh Erteghaei). She is excited to meet them and is taken aback when she learns that Marziyeh has been missing for three days. When Behnaz shows her the message, Maedeh becomes frightened because it's been sent from Marziyeh's phone. They go to the cave, but find no evidence of a rope, even though they see the overhanging branch. Panahi suggests that the family has cleared it away to preserve their honour and cover their backs, but Behnaz isn't convinced. 

They return to the village, where the old man they had encountered earlier is explaining that they beep horns to warn oncoming cars on the narrow road. His companion declares that people need rules and curses Marziyeh for consistently disregarding them. Moreover, he avers that becoming an entertainer is a waste of time, as it was for Shahrazade (Kohra Saeedi), who had made films before the Revolution and is now a recluse. While they chat, Behnaz sees a girl by the car and wanders off with her. Panahi follows and sees Behnaz slapping Marziyeh and being equally angry with Maedeh for putting on an act. But the girls plead with her not to abandon them, as she's their last hope. Affronted at being called by her first name by an empty-headed girl with a talent for trouble, Behnaz announces her intention to leave. 

However, the road is blocked by a bull with a broken leg and his owner (Asghar Aslami) is waiting for the vet because he's a beast with `golden balls' who is worth a fortune because he once sired 10 calves in a single night. As he talks, the camera follows Behnaz as she walks up to the gently bellowing creature and tells Panahi to go back to the village. They find Shahrazade's house and he waits outside as his companion goes inside. A noisy procession of cars goes past (presumably from the wedding seen earlier). After a while, Behnaz returns to reveal that Shahrazade has nothing but contempt for the directors who had treated her so badly when she acted and had abandoned her to her fate. Panahi protests that he didn't make films back then, but concedes that lots of other performers suffered in the same way. According to Behnaz, Shahrazade has nothing but her film posters and feels sorry for her. She also feels less angry with Marziyeh and returns to spend the night with her, while Panahi sleeps in the car. 

He decides to doze and leave Behnaz to go to the village to make a phone call to apologise to the production manager she has messed around. She goes to the cafe to use the landline and bumps into Yadollah, who wishes to speak to her. He tells her about his son, Ayoub, and how he waited an eternity for a second son. Moreover, he explains the custom of a godfather burying a foreskin to determine the fate of a child and claimed he had hoped that Ayoub's would be buried in the courtyard of a palace so that he could end up there, even as a janitor. Now he has had a new son and he shows Behnaz a poster of a film starring Behrouz Vossoughi and asks if he is still alive because he is a real man and Yadollah hopes that he can take the second child's foreskin and help Ayoub to have a better life. 

Behnaz tries to explain that Vossoughi lives abroad and that Panahi can't travel to take the pouch to him. Yadollah understands, but gives her a letter detailing Ayoub's life story in case Panahi can help. As she walks back to the car, Behnaz passes Marziyeh's mother and reassures her that her daughter is okay. However, she now fears that her brother will go to Shahrazade's house and burn it down. As she walks on, Behnaz drops in on the old woman in her grave and the light from her lantern pierces the darkness. On reaching the vehicle, she sees Merziyeh chatting to Panahi about Shahrazade, who has spent her days painting since the mayor drove her out of town to her shack. She also confides that her fiancé is an army deserter, who keeps promising to return, only to disappear again. Tellingly, she also reveals that she once tried to widen the road, only for the menfolk to scold her because it's not a woman's place to interfere in matters she doesn't understand. 

Once they are alone, Behnaz gives Panahi the foreskin pouch and the letter. She also presents him with a CD of Shahrazade's poetry, which he plays when she goes back to the hut. Three men come from the mayor to check that Panahi is okay and offer him hospitality, but he decides to stay in the car. The next morning, Behnaz and Merziyeh come out to see him and show him a drawing that Shahrazade has done for him. They set off for home and promptly get stuck behind a flock of sheep before delivering Merziyeh to her father, who has returned from Tehran and promises not to let her brother harm her. Indeed, the father throws the son out of the house and he kicks a stone out of the wall is his fury before crouching down to glare at Panahi. While waiting for Behnaz to return, he goes for a stroll and sees Shahrazade painting in a field. 

When they finally leave, a point-of-view shot reveals a crack in the windscreen. On reaching the beeping point, Behnaz walks ahead while Panahi waits his turn. Sporting a white headdress, Marziyeh runs after the actress and urges her to wait. As they wander on, a convoy of three cattle trucks brings heifers for the bull, but we never learn if he's alive and able to perform. Nor do we know how things will pan out for Marziyeh because it's not clear if has run away or whether Behnaz will be willing to help her. 

Working from a story he had spotted in the papers and shooting in the villages where his grandparents and parents had been raised, Panahi doesn't appear to be an artist in extremis in this playful, but deceptively sharp treatise on freedom of expression, outdated modes of masculinity and the treatment of women inside the Islamic Republic. The fact that the cast and crew members are credited for the first time since Panahi was sentenced suggests either extraordinary courage on the part of his colleagues or a subversive pride in collaborating with a supposed pariah. 

Either way, Amin Jafari's camerawork is lithe and alert, while the performances have a charming. neo-realist authenticity. Panahi makes an amusing foil to popular stage and screen star Behnaz Jafari, while the debuting Marziyeh Rezaei contributes a bustling display that contrasts with the discretion of Kobra Saeedi, who had starred in such landmark Iranian features as Masoud Kimiai's noir, Qeysar (1969), and yet is only seen in long shot and heard on disc reading her poetry to reinforce Panahi's assertions about the depiction of and discrimination against Iranian women. 

Although only seen on a poster, Behrouz Vossoughi also serves a symbolic purpose, as he was the macho star of movies like Amir Naderi's Tangsir (1973), a revenge thriller that encourages revolt against corruption and upholds the concept of the saviour hero that is gently debunked here in the teasingly ineffectual support that Panahi provides his travelling companion when they ride into town. The narrow road along which they pass has a dual purpose, as it not only represents the restrictions placed upon Iranians, but it also symbolises the route Iranian cinema has taken, with Saeedi, Jafari and Rezaei personifying its past, present and future. Similarly, the allusion to Vossoughi reinforces the satirical references to the stud bull and the fetishised foreskin. Moreover, the very fact that Panahi was able to work in the open suggests that he is growing in rebellious confidence and one can only hope that he continues to box clever and send us more missives from the Tehran trenches and beyond.

Apart from a child-acting credit in Alexander Mackendrick's A High Wind in Jamaica (1965), Martin Amis hasn't had much luck on screen. He started decently enough with an original screenplay for Stanley Donen's Saturn 3 (1980). But there was nothing special about his storyline for Syd Macartney's short, The Nihilist's Double Vision (1987), while Damian Harris and William Marsh's respective takes on The Rachel Papers (1989) and Dead Babies (2000) were eminently forgettable. Jeremy Lovering's two-part take on Money (2010) was even worse. So, expectations were understandably low for an adaptation of Night Train entitled Out of Blue, even though director Carol Morley (working outside Blighty for the first time) has consistently impressed with the documentaries The Alcohol Years (2000) and Dream of a Life (2011) and the fictional featured, Edge (2010) and The Falling (2014).

Shortly after giving a lecture about humanity's place in the universe on the roof of a New Orleans observatory, astronomer Jennifer Rockwell (Mamie Gummer) is found dead. As Dectective Mike Hoolihan (Patricia Clarkson) observes, she had been shot and a red shoe, a sock and a tub of Hydra face cream are positioned near the corpse. Having made a quick sketch, Hoolihan looks in on the victim's boss, Professor Ian Strammi (Toby Jones), who claims to have been at the lake gazing at stars with Sabrina White (Bri Collins). He also defends the decision to close the roof of the telescope dome to protect the expensive equipment from the rain. 

Sitting in Jennifer's car, the world-weary Hoolihan is playing Brenda Lee's `I'll Be Seeing You' on the cassette player when TV news reporter Stella Honey (Devyn A. Taylor) asks if she has any information she can reveal. She brushes her off and returns to headquarters to examine CCTV footage with boss Janey Mac (Yolonda Ross) and assistant Tony Silvero (Aaron Tveit), and to break the news of his girlfriend's death to Duncan J Reynolds (Jonathan Majors). He appears genuinely surprised, but Hoolihan notices he is wearing odd socks (with one being similar to the item found at the crime scene) and decides to keep him overnight to let him stew. 

Having checked on Strammi's alibi with White (and learned about Schrödinger's cat), she attends an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and is surprised to see Honey sitting opposite her. They go for food and Hoolihan reveals that she remembers nothing of a trauma that presaged a childhood in foster homes. Honey is curious why she hasn't attempted to trace her birth family, but Hoolihan is content to remains in the dark. At that moment, Honey pops up on TV outlining the fact that Jennifer is the daughter of hero POW and electrics tycoon Colonel Tom Rockwell (James Caan) and his philanthropic wife, Miriam (Jacki Weaver), who is also the mother twin sons, Walt and Bray (Brad and Todd Mann). When she turns away from the screen, however, Hoolihan finds herself alone at the counter with the waitress. 

Unable to sleep, Hoolihan strokes her grey cat and reads the press report about the `,38 Calibre Killer'. She shines her torch at a red scarf fluttering in front of the fan and is taken aback when Mac tells her that a similar scarf was missing from the crime scene. Colonel Rockwell comes to the station to ask if he can see the suspect in custody and Hoolihan goes to touch his cheek when he begins trembling with grief because he'll never feel a daughter's unconditional love again. She also places a hand on Reynolds's arm when he blames himself for rushing home to work on his latest theory rather than taking Jennifer to make love under the stars. But he loses his temper when she asks if they ever used drugs and he is released soon after demanding to see a lawyer. 

Wandering around Jennifer's house, Hoolihan picks up a snow globe that sparks a flashback, in which she sees a necklace burst and blue beads (like the single one she wears round her neck) go flying through the air. She faints but waves away Mac's concern. Nevertheless, she finds herself fingering the bead when she calls on the Rockwells to let them know how the case is proceeding. At her desk that night, she examines phone footage of Jennifer's talk about people being stardust and she thinks a figure in the shadows might be her father because he is wearing a wide-brimmed hat. However, Mac is convinced that the shifty Strammi is a more likely culprit, while Silvera wonders whether she really is the victim of a serial killer. 

Honey is thinking along the same lines and mentions how this 1980s menace used to take trophies from the scene. She asks if Hoolihan has checked if anything has gone missing and she notices that the open jar of face cream has vanished and goes to see Strammi and Reynolds again. Neither is convincing in pleading innocence and Hoolihan spots White beetling out of the latter's lecture before she is seen. Reynolds struggles to remember what Jennifer was wearing when she was killed, but he does recall the red scarf and counters Hoolihan's accusation that he doesn't seem interested in finding the killer by suggesting she should stick to her job and not badger innocent people. 

Curious about a remark by one of the twins about his sister possibly having friends the family knew nothing about, Hoolihan goes to the factory and spots a broach on a warehouse table that causes another momentary flashback. She bumps into Laurel Ann (Alyshia Ochse), who is zooming around on a Segue and seems ready to gossip about the family, despite hero-worshipping Colonel Rockwell. Bray and Walt clam up about their stranger theory, but let Hoolihan keep the broach, which she notices Jennifer wearing in a photograph in the paper. Miriam is also hazy, but shows Hoolihan a portrait of her mother-in-law and the detective feels queasy when Miriam says he was just a boy when something happened to her (but she tails off without revealing what).

Silvero has dropped the Calibre Killer theory, even though all of the past victims worked for Rockwell Electrics and had their faces blown off at close range. This remark prompts Hoolihan to go in search of the gun and she finds it buried in its case near the observatory. Strammi admits its his and Rockwell tries to assault him when he's brought in for questioning. He claims he panicked on seeing the weapon and tried to hide it before anyone accused him. But Silvero isn't impressed and jokes that he killed Jennifer and was too dumb to put the gun in her hand to make it look like a suicide. 

At that instant, Hoolihan realises that this was exactly what happened and that the force of the blast caused the gun to fly out of Jennifer's hand and the distance it travelled from the body caused Strammi to think she had been murdered and someone was trying to frame him. They find a goodbye message on the cassette from her car and Hoolihan finds a small piece of paper inside with an `m' or `w' written on it. She calls on Reynolds to break the news and he uses his key to enter Jennifer's next-door house. It's full of vintage collectibles and he tells Hoolihan that her father got her into what he considers old tat. Examining a postcard with her trusty magnifying glass, Hoolihan listens half-comprehendingly as Reynolds tells her about black holes and parallel universes and he concludes that he clearly didn't know Jennifer as well as he thought he did. 

Something keeps nagging at Hoolihan, however, and she dreams about Jennifer singing `I'll Be Seeing You' (also the message on the postcard) on a nightclub stage before waking with a start to find the power has cut out and she shines her torch into the air for reassurance. Mac wants her to see a doctor, but Hoolihan uses the appointment to ask about Jennifer and goes to her memorial service to see Reynolds speaking fondly about her. He says it's a shame her passing makes her such an enigma and he urges everyone to look at the person next to them and Hoolihan sees Honey, as she stands at the back of the room. As she leaves, Miriam jumps into her car and confides that her husband spent his life trying to get his daughter to love him, but he singularly failed. 

When she calls on Reynolds, he places her in front of a mirror with another at her back and explains that Jennifer believed in the multiverse and probably felt she was only killing one of her alternate selves. But the case refuses to close and Hoolihan becomes convinced that something happened between Jennifer and her father on the night she died. When she goes to question him, she is swept away by Miriam, who announces she is leaving him and wants to carry out Jennifer's last request of having her ashes scattered in a random dumpster. She urges Hoolihan to find peace with her own past, but a dossier unearthed by Honey sets her off in another direction with links to the Calibre Killer. 

Having interviewed a blind woman who was present at the unsolved slaying and recalls hearing someone walking with a limp, Hoolihan checks the footage she has of Colonel Rockwell and notices he changes the leg he limps on. Buying a .38 revolver, she confronts him and he pushes her to the ground. The jolt forces her to admit to herself that Honey is a figment of her imagination and she apologises to him for blundering down the wrong track. He regrets not being there when Jennifer needed him, as he sensed she was troubled. But he will have to live with his failure for the rest of his life. 

Exhausted and stressed, Hoolihan goes to a pole-dancing club and finds Strammi at the bar. She falls off the wagon and gets so drunk, she unbuttons her shirt and dances on the stage before waking in her car to find Honey offering non-judgemental support, as she has had her wild nights, too. Next morning, she brings doughnuts into work and leaves her badge and gun in her desk for Mac to find. She also persuades Reynolds to take her cat, Lola, by claiming she survived Schrödinger. However, as she goes to the observatory to kill herself, Hoolihan has a vision of various women from the case telling her to see things a new way and she suddenly associates a distorted face on the margins of a Rockwell family portrait with an item found at a Calibre murder scene and she realises that the Colonel had been the serial killer all along and that Jennifer had rumbled him. 

When Hoolihan bursts into Bray and Walt's office to inspect the painting, the former breaks down and confesses that their father had tyrannised them as kids without ever laying a finger on them. She goes to Jennifer's house, where, surrounded by the bric-a-brac, she thinks back to the night the Calibre Killer had gunned down her mother and she had seen his hatted silhouette while hiding in a cupboard. On crossing the room to check her mother was okay, she had picked up a blue bead from her broken necklace and started putting cream on her arms to make her feel better. Slipping out of the same closet, Hoolihan walks over to her mother and lies with her head on her side, as a female cop takes her younger self away and a police photographer had snapped the scene with a flashbulb camera. 

As the film ends, Hoolihan drives across a nocturnal New Orleans with the blue light flashing in her car. We don't see Colonel Rockwell arrested. Nor do we learn the extent to which his experiences as a prisoner of war helped turn him into a psychopath. Indeed, there are lots of gaps in Morley's screenplay and her grasp of the metaphysical concepts that underpin the narrative doesn't always feel secure. But, while occasionally risks teetering over through a combination of its incoherence and imperiousness, this hard-boiled neo-noir procedural intrigues as much as it baffles. 

Suffused with a melancholy that is reinforced by Clint Mansell's sometimes less than finesseful score, the mystery is rather cluttered by Hoolihan's own suppressed trauma and her liaison with an imaginary reporter. Yet Alex Mackie's editing is as impressive as Conrad W. Hall's dislocatory photography and Jane Levick's gleefully eccentric production design. But, as with The Falling, Morely presents the uncanny with a conviction that drags the audience in her wake and, even though this often has a feel of David Lynch's original series of Twin Peaks (1990-91), it's no surprise to see Nicolas Roeg thanked in the credit or to discover his son, Luc, among the producers. 

The whole house of cards would come tumbling down without the protean Patricia Clarkson, however, as she owns the caricatured elements of her cop in crisis in much the same way that Nicole Kidman did in Karyn Kusama's Destroyer and Vincent Cassell did in Erick Zonca's Black Tide (2018). Thus, while Amis scores another big-screen miss and the laudably ambitious Morley proves that the symbol-strewn whodunnit isn't her forte (as either writer or director), Clarkson confirms that she is one of the finest actresses currently working in Hollywood, as she manages to keep her head when so many of her co-stars are quite clearly losing theirs.

Since debuting with The Future Lasts a Long Time (1996), writer-director David Jackson has completed a clutch of shorts, including The Last Breath (2009) and Unoriginal (2018). In between times, he has amassed credits on TV series like Clocking Off (2002), Holby City (2003-04) and The Bill (2007). He now makes his move into features with Winterlong, a commendable bid to inject a little visual poetry into an overly familiar and increasingly specious social realist scenario that is most notable for the fact that it reunites Jackson with his son, Harper, who had appeared in The Last Breath alongside returning co-stars Carole Weyers and Francis Magee. 

When Kaye (Robin Weaver) meets a new man, she dumps 15 year-old son, Julian (Harper Jackson), on his Irish dad, Francis (Francis Magee), who lives in a ramshackle caravan on the outskirts of Hastings. Deeply resenting being entrusted to a stranger, Julian attempts to run away and it's only after he discovers that his mother has moved out of their old address that he accepts he has no option other than to make a go of things with his poacher father. 

Things brighten up after he discovers Francis is dating Carole (Carole Weyers), a Belgian singer whose band they go to see playing in a local pub. Francis almost gets into a fight while dancing in front of the stage and Carole is peeved with him for never mentioning a child. But Julian takes to her and readily joins her under the blanket when she insists they warm each other up in the freezing caravan. He is even more delighted when she persuades Francis to take a winter lease on a trailer in a manicured park, with excellent facilities.  

Both are disappointed when Carole departs for a tour back home and Julian is alarmed by Francis's response when they go shooting with weapons he keeps in a secret cache in the woods. However, they continue to muddle along, with Julian developing a crush on Taylor (Nina Iceton) after he sees her swimming in the camp pool and Francis catching the eye of opera-warbling neighbour Barbara (Doon Mackichan), who welcomes them with a homecooked supper and an invitation to join her at quiz night at the clubhouse. She flirts shamelessly with Francis, while the bored Julian gets drunk on unfinished bottles and throws up.

He has a hangover next morning and his sulk on being dispatched to school scarcely dissipates, despite being told to sit next to Taylor in class. In his absence, Barbara asks Francis to fix a broken hinge on her bedroom door and makes it clear that she is widowed and available. As he stumps home, Francis already regrets his actions, but he soon has other things to think about, as Julian comes home having been headbutted by Taylor's jealous boyfriend and he throws a strop about wanting to go back to his old life. However, they cheer up when Barbara brings a lasagne (and Francis persuades her not to stay by fibbing that his father has died) and they decide to do a bunk for a couple of days. 

Having spent the day rowing on a lake and romping through the woods, father and son build a bivouac out of branches and foliage and hunker down for the night. While they're away, Carole returns and leaves a note with Barbara accepting the marriage proposal that Francis had made at Winchelsea station before her departure. The spurned neighbour is furious and gives Francis a frosty reception when he brings her a sack of Maris Pipers to thank her for the meals. Moreover, when she can't help but interfere when she sees Julian and Taylor (who became an instant item when he returned to school) running away from the copper who caught them scrawling their names on a Hastings alley wall.

After bunking off to eat chips by the sea, Julian takes Taylor to see the secret weapon cache and chases after her with a Luger. It goes off and she rushes to the caravan park, where Francis just happens to be the first person she bumps into. He tells the doctor at the hospital that Julian was injured by a chainsaw and tosses the pistol into the lake. The boy agrees to go along with the lie, as he doesn't want to get his father in trouble. However, Paul Castle (Ian Pulveston-Davies) from social services pays him a call and notes that he has previous convictions for firearms offences. He warns Francis that he will lose custody unless he co-operates and he is arrested shortly after Taylor shows the police where the accident happened. Seeing his father being dragged away (by two unnecessarily officious cops), Julian aims the rifle at them through the caravan window, but he realises such bravura will only make matters worse. 

As it happens to be Julian's 16th birthday, Castle is prepared to leave him alone in the caravan while he waits for Francis to return. However, the youth refuses to go back to Kaye and joins Francis in torching their old abode before staging a Beachy Head suicide plunge and taking the ferry to Calais to hook up with Carole for a new life on the continent. 

It's hard to pinpoint the precise moment that this earnest drama goes off the rails. But its opening premise takes some swallowing and, from the moment Francis shows Julian the guns barely hidden under a mattress on a fly tip, the narrative rapidly becomes ever more implausible until it eventually topples over into sub-soap operatics. The denouement is so flagrantly melodramatic that many will feel the goodwill they have clung on to during the remorseless aggregation of convolutions seeping away. Yet, for all the flaws in its storyline and the clumsiness of dialogue that often defeats the more inexperienced cast members, this is a sincere attempt to explore a largely neglected aspect of our society.

David Jackson clearly has a fine eye for an atmospheric setting and Ben Cole's views of the Sussex countryside and coastline are often striking. He is also well served by production designer Janice Flint, who ably contrasts the caravans and their environs. However, Rob Lane's score is as over-insistent as some of the performances, with even the estimable Doon Mackichan struggling to prevent the jilted Barbara from becoming a penny dreadful termagant. But it's Jackson's characterisation that proves the most problematic, as Francis and Carole are presented as romanticised outsiders, while Julian is so thinly sketched that it's difficult for Harper Jackson to invest the role with any personality. 

A number of recent attempts have stumbled in their efforts to move British social realism away from the Loachian model. But their makers should be applauded for trying to avoid the kind of preachy politicking that has turned our cinema into a soapbox. Of course, films should have a message. However, they should heed novelist-critic Graham Greene's avowal from the 1930s that they should depict life as it is lived rather than as it suits the film-maker. Many more homegrown pictures will fall into the same trap before the year is out, but one can only hope that UK directors will continue to reflect the experiences of those on the margins, off the grid and below the line.

Since it first appeared in Maurice Elvey's 1918 adaptation of Stanley Houghton's hit play, Hindle Wakes, Blackpool Tower has featured in a number of seaside sagas. Telling the story of a Lancashire mill girl who refuses to marry after her dalliance with the boss's son is rumbled, this theatrical warhorse has resurfaced in the form of Elvey's 1927 silent remake, Victor Saville's 1931 talkie version and Arthur Crabtree's 1952 updating. Laurence Olivier even directed a variation for the telly in 1976. But the 518ft structure has also towered over Basil Dean's Gracie Fields vehicle, Sing As We Go! (1934); Lupino Lane's spy romp, No Lady (1936); Bernard Vorhaus's mill comedy, Cotton Queen (1937); John E. Blakeley's Frank Randle farce, Holidays With Pay (1948); George King's noirish thriller, Forbidden (1949); Alfred Travers's circus thriller, Double Alibi (1957); Peter Chelsom's Pleasure Beach dramedy, Funny Bones (1995); Paul Orerenland's gay boxing drama, Like It Is (1998); and David Blair's gritty slice of social realism, Away (2016). 

Having negotiated the Calais Jungle of In Another Life (2017), sophomore director Jason Wingard makes for the Fylde coast in Eaten By Lions, which continues a recent run of British seaside movies that took audiences to Saltburn for Bryn Higgins's Electricity (2014), Bournemouth for Dan Pringle's K-Shop (2016), Weymouth for Tom Beard's Two For Joy, Southend for Ed Lilly's VS,, Margate for James Gardner's Jellyfish, and Hastings for the aforementioned Winterlong (all 2018). Echoes of Gurinder Chadha's Bhaji on the Beach (1993) can be heard throughout this eager comedy, whose sitcomedic tone owes to Goodness Gracious Me (1996-98), The Kumars At No.42 (2001-14), Citizen Khan (2012-) and People Just Do Nothing (2014-18) than Johnny Speight's ill-judged and mercifully short-lived Curry and Chips (1969), which starred Spike Milligan in brownface as a Pakistani immigrant named Kevin O'Grady.

Half-brothers Omar (Antonio Aakeel) and Pete (Jack Carroll) had been brought up in a Bradford flat by their grandmother, Edith, (Stephanie Fayerman) after their mother and Pete's father had been eaten by lions in a bizarre safari park accident. When Gran dies, however, Aunt Ellen (Vicki Pepperdine) and Uncle Ken (Kevin Eldon) are only willing to adopt her brother's son, as he needs stability because of his cerebral palsy. But, while Pete gloats over the fact that he has his own room while Omar has to bed down in the cupboard under the stairs, he readily joins his sibling when he decides to travel to Blackpool to find the father whose identity has always been a mystery. 

While wandering on the pier, Pete suggests they consult a fortune teller (Tom Binns) to see if he can tell them where to find Malik. An obvious charlatan, the long-haired Geordie gives Omar a tarot reading and prompts the brothers into giving away information that he can claim to have seen in the ether. However, he hits a raw nerve with Omar when he mentions a wolf, as the hospitalised Edith had told the boys the fable about the dog and the wolf in urging them to look after each other. Sitting on the beach, Pete promises to stand by Omar if he fetches him an Amy Winehouse-sized candy floss. By the time he returns, however, the tide has come in and swept away the suitcase containing their money and Omar has to ask a favour of Amy (Sarah Hoare), the pink-haired free spirit he had encountered at the ice-cream van. 

She works at Sea Planet and agrees to find them free digs at Castle del Rey, the seedy B&B run by her Uncle Ray (Johnny Vegas). With his lank locks and golden dressing-gown, he is eccentric to say the least. But he lends them some clothes so that they can scatter Edith's ashes off the pier. While there, they bump into the fortune teller, who has Googled Malik's address. On arriving at the large suburban house, however, Omar and Pete receive a frosty welcome from the extended family, as not only is it Ramadan, but they are also in the middle of an engagement party. 

Unsurprisingly, Malik (Nitin Ganatra) denies being Omar's dad. But Pete presents a birth certificate, a journal entry about a trip to Rhyl and a photograph to bolster his case. While Malik's wife, Sara (Hayley Tamaddon), mother Tamzin (Neelam Bakshi), grandmother Sajida (Teresa Mondo) and daughters Nadia (Shila Iqbal), Parveen (Natalie Davies) and Romana (Aarya Dalvi), listen on with mouths agape, Malik's brother, Irfan (Asim Chaudhry), rolls up to give himself away as the real culprit by crooning the Chesney Hawkes hit, `I Am the One and Only', which had been mentioned in the diary. 

Having tried to run away, Irfan is forced to admit that he had sex with Omar's mother in the disabled toilets at the hospital after he broke her nose by falling on her at an ice rink. He swears that he would have done the right thing if he had known, but also complains that he doesn't want a son and gets dirty looks from both his mother and brother. However, Omar and Pete are invited to stay for lunch and meet grandfather Saftar (Darshan Jariwala), who proves highly ineffectual in trying to punish Irfan for his reckless behaviour. They also learn that Parveen is an elective mute. However, she turns out to be quite capable of talking when she lets Pete know in no uncertain terms that she fancies him. 

Leaving Pete at the guest house, Omar goes for a walk to clear his head and runs into Amy. She says it would be a shame if he returned to Bradford and tacks him paddling under the stars. Returning to find Pete and Uncle Ray waiting up for him, Omar promises to stick by his brother. But Pete feels left out when Omar and Irfan start bonding on a tour of Blackpool that includes the family gift shop, an amusement arcade and a drag club at which Irfan doesn't realise that the artistes are men in women's clothing. Moreover, Pete's hurt when he is accused of seducing Parveen (after she has climbed into his bed while he was asleep) and Omar grumbles that he is tired of being his carer. 

All seems set to change when Ellen and Ken turn up to collect Pete and Omar runs away. However, Parveen borrows Saftar's yellow Rolls Royce to search the seafront, where Omar is showing Amy the drawings he has kept in a scrapbook that Edith had given him when he was a small boy. They go to the aquarium and kiss under the big dipper, as fireworks erupt in the sky. Meanwhile, Parveen has driven along the beach at dusk and picked up a homeless man who parties in the backseat with the drag queens, as Pete wonders what he's got himself into when Parveen announces they are engaged. 

Crashing the car on the drive, Parveen invites all-comers to a party that ends abruptly when the family gets home and she vomits on the cops called by Ellen. This results in Pete moving in with his aunt and uncle, while Omar winds up in a foster home. Irfan comes to visit and apologises for being a loser man child. However, he invites him to move into his annex in the back garden and drives him back to Bradford to ask Pete if he wants to join them. But he feels they have drifted apart and that it would be better if he stayed with his starchy, if well-meaning relatives. As Omar and Irfan drive away, however, they see Pete following in a motorised chair and he moves to Blackpool in time for Nadia's wedding, where Irfan makes a resoundingly unfunny speech and Parveen makes another play for Pete before the curtain comes down on everybody dancing. 

This last gambit reminds the audience that they have been watching a concoction rather than a documentary. But few will need reminding, as reality is kept at a distant remove throughout this culture-clash comedy, which builds slowly and runs out of steam far too quickly. It won't come as a surprise to learn that Wingard's co-writer, David Isaac, has worked on Coronation Street and Citizen Kahn, and it's a fair bet that both are fans of the Carry Ons and Bruce Robinson's Withnail and I (1987), as both Tom Binn's fake fortune teller and Johnny Vegas's Uncle Monty-like hotelier would not look out of place in Fircombe. 

Considering this is meant to be a film about individuality and acceptance, stereotypes and clichés abound, with gags involving a burqa pen and the similarities between Ramadan and Joe Dante's Gremlins (1984) rather reinforcing the tone. Moreover, there's something distastefully chauvinistic about Vicki Pepperdine's shrewish aunt and Natalie Davies's teenage vamp, while Vegas's camp turn would make Larry Grayson and John Inman blush. 

Nevertheless, Antonio Aakeel and Jack Carroll make an amusing double act and it wouldn't be a surprise to see this format follow Peter Foott's The Young Offenders (2017) in making a transition to the small screen. Indeed, the situation always feels better suited to an episodic structure, as the subplots involving Davies and Sarah Hoare feel shoehorned in, while Aakeel's bid to bond with Asim Chaudhry is overly cosily resolved in a single scene. If Wingard ever does get a TV commission, let's hope he uses some of the money on background extras, as, despite Matt North's bracing seascapes, this is hardly a great tourist advertisement for Blackpool, as there isn't a soul around and it's supposed to be spring.